"While there has been a 24% drop in claimants for physical health
conditions the data indicates that the current paradigm of psychiatric
care, which centres on drug treatments, isn’t enabling people to get
back to work. Furthermore, there is growing evidence that the increasing
long-term use of psychiatric drugs may itself be contributing to the
problem. This striking increase in mental health disability is mirrored
in other developed nations, and the rises predate the recent financial
crisis. For example in the US it has been calculated that there were
around 4 million mentally ill recipients of disability payments in 2007,
up from 1.25 million in 1987. Similar increases have been identified in
other countries." (1)